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Norms and Causation

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Norms and Causation 1 Cause and Norm [Forthcoming in Journal of Philosophy] Christopher Hitchcock Division of Humanities and Social Sciences California Institute of Technology Joshua Knobe Department of Philosophy University of North Carolina 2 Cause and Norm1 1. Introduction Much of the philosophical literature on causation has focused on the concept of ‗actual‘ causation, sometimes called ‗token‘ causation. In particular, it is this notion of actual causation that many philosophical theories of causation have attempted to capture.2 In this paper, we address the question: what purpose does this concept serve? As we shall see in the next section, one does not need this concept for purposes of prediction or rational deliberation. What then could the purpose be? We will argue that one can gain 1 We would like to thank Nancy Cartwright, Clark Glymour, Alison Gopnik, Dennis Hilton, Christoph Hoerl, David Lagnado, Tania Lombrozo, David Mandel, Laurie Paul, Jonathan Schaffer, Jim Woodward, Gideon Yaffe and audience members at the McDonnell workshop on Causal and Moral Cognition (California Institute of Technology), the University of Southern California, the workshop on the Origins and Functions of Causal Thinking IV (Venice, Italy), Rutgers University, the Society for Philosophy and Psychology (Toronto), the Workshop on Causal and Counterfactual Understanding (University of Warwick), and the Workshop on Counterfactuals (Erasmus University Rotterdam). 2 For example, Armstrong (2004), Barker (2004), Björnsson (2007), Davidson (1980), Dowe (2000), Eells (1001. Chapter 6), Ehring (1997), Ganeri, Noordhof and Ramachandran (1996, 1998), Glymour and Wimberly (2007), Hall (2007), Halpern and Pearl (2005), Hiddleston (2005), Hitchcock (2001, 2004, 2007a), Kvart (1997), Lewis (1973/1986, 1986a, 2000), McDermott (1995), Menzies (1989, 1996, 2004a, 2004b), Noordhof (1999, 2004), Pearl (2000, chapter 10), Ramachandran (1997, 1998, 2004a, 2004b), Schaffer (2001), Tooley (1987), Woodward (2003, chapter 2) and Yablo (2002, 2004). 3 an important clue here by looking at the ways in which causal judgments are shaped by people‘s understanding of norms. 2. The problem We may illustrate the concept of actual causation with a simple example: Assassin and Backup set off on a mission to poison Victim. Assassin puts poison in Victim‘s drink. Backup stands at the ready; if Assassin hadn‘t poisoned the drink, Backup would have. Both poisons are lethal. Victim drinks the poison and dies. This is an example of causal preemption: Assassin‘s action causes Victim‘s death, and also preempts Backup‘s action, which would have caused the death if Assassin had not acted. Cases of causal preemption have received a lot of attention, since they provide problems for both regularity and counterfactual theories of causation. Backup‘s presence, plus his willingness to use the poison, together with the composition of the poison, Victim‘s thirst, and other factors, are nomically sufficient for Victim‘s death without the need to mention Assassin; nonetheless, Backup is not a cause of Victim‘s death. And Victim‘s death would have occurred even if Assassin had not acted; nonetheless, Assassin‘s action is a cause of Victim‘s death. Our little story has a causal structure, which can be represented abstractly using a neuron diagram (fig. 1) or a system of structural equations as follows: 4 AS = 1 BS = 1 AP = AS BP = BS & ~AP PD = AP BP VD = PD (Where AS represents ‗Assassin sets off‘, BS ‗Backup sets off‘, AP ‗Assassin poisons the drink‘, BP ‗Backup poisons the drink‘, PD ‗The drink is poisoned‘, and VD ‗Victim dies‘.) These representations tell us how each event in the story depends upon the other events in the story. For example, they tell us that Backup would have poisoned the drink just in case he set off, and Assassin hadn‘t poisoned the drink. Note that there is nothing inherently general or universal about the causal structure. For example, the last equation only tells us that in this particular case, Victim would have died if his drink had been poisoned, and would not have died if it had not been poisoned. It does not say that poisonings always, or even typically, cause deaths.3 Over and above this causal structure, however, we have the judgment that Assassin‘s actions caused Victim to die, while Backup‘s actions did not. This is a judgment about actual causation. We wish to ask what the purpose of such a judgment is. In particular, why don‘t we make do with just the causal structure? After all, the causal structure suffices to allow us to make predictions about what will happen, given any 3 See Hitchcock (2007a, 2007b) for further discussion of this point. 5 combination of the relevant causal antecedents. The causal structure allows us to infer what would happen if we were to interfere with the system to disrupt the causal relationships in various ways. And the causal structure allows us to answer any counterfactual questions about how things might have gone differently. What more could we want from knowledge of causation? We may approach this problem from a slightly different direction. There have been a number of attempts to extend the counterfactual theory of causation to accommodate cases of causal preemption. One promising line, realized in somewhat different ways by Lewis (1986), Halpern and Pearl (2005), Hall (2007), and Hitchcock (2007), is to identify causation not with counterfactual dependence in the actual situation, but rather with counterfactual dependence in a certain kind of ‗normalized‘ version of the actual situation. This normalized situation is reached by replacing abnormal features of the actual situation with more normal alternatives. Thus in our little causal story, while Victim‘s death does not counterfactually depend upon Assassin‘s action in the actual situation described, it would depend upon Assassin‘s action in the normalized version of the situation where Backup is not present. This is a rough sketch only; the details need not detain us. The question that arises is: what purpose can be served by a concept that has these contours? What purpose can be served by identifying factors that would have made a difference, not in the actual situation, but in a modified version of the actual situation? 3. Solution sketch 6 Before we begin examining the purpose of the concept of actual causation, it might be helpful to consider one popular view about the purpose of the concept of causal structure. Several authors have championed the view that the purpose of understanding causal structure is to predict the outcomes of interventions (e.g., Cartwright 1979; Woodward 2003). In particular, it has been suggested that the key difference between knowing causal structure and merely knowing facts about correlations is that the former type of knowledge can enable people to predict the outcomes of intervention in a way that the latter cannot. To see the distinctive role of the concept of causation here, consider what might happen if you discovered a correlation whereby people who are beaten as children tend to be more violent as adults. Just by knowing that correlation, you could predict that a child who was beaten would be more likely to later become violent. Why then would you want to know whether there was actually a causal relationship between being beaten and becoming violent? The idea we will be drawing on here is that this information about causation proves useful when one‘s goal is not only to predict the results of subsequent observations but also to actively intervene in the world. Hence, in this example, the important thing about knowing whether there was a causal relationship here would be that this sort of knowledge would allow you to determine whether you could actually prevent people from becoming violent in adulthood by intervening to prevent them from being beaten as children. Our aim here is to construct an account that extends this basic insight, showing how people‘s concept of actual causation enables them to design effective interventions. In particular, we argue that information that has nothing to do with causal structure can 7 sometimes prove helpful in determining which intervention would be most suitable and that people are actually making use of this information in deciding which factors to denominate as ‗causes.‘ In general, while causal structure identifies all of the factors that could be manipulated (either singly or in combination) to effect a change in the outcome, the actual causes are the factors that should be manipulated. For a simple example, consider a student who has just gotten an F on a test and is wondering how this outcome might have been avoided. At least in theory, she might consider all sorts of different possibilities: ‗I would not have gotten an F if the teacher had been eaten by a lion.‘ ‗I would not have gotten an F if the Earth‘s gravitational pull had suddenly decreased.‘ ‗I would not have gotten an F if I had had less to drink the night before the test.‘ Yet although all of these different counterfactuals might be correct, she is only likely to entertain one of these, and only one of them actually points toward a suitable target of intervention. She should not be wasting her time thinking about the possibility of avoiding a bad grade by introducing lions or decreasing the Earth‘s gravitational pull. The thing to focus on here is the possibility of getting a better grade by drinking less. It is in addressing problems like this one, we think, that the concept of actual causation really earns its keep. Information about causal structure entails many different counterfactuals about how a given outcome might have been avoided. But people‘s judgments of actual causation do something more. They select, from amongst all of these different counterfactuals, a chosen few that might actually be worth considering.
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